f13.net

A bit of a rant,

We've been plagued in my neighborhood with dog walkers treading all over our property:

1) There's one lady who lets her dog shit on our lawn.  I caught her on our camera a few times, and once I was lucky enough to catch her dog mid-loaf.  I told her, "This is not a public dog restroom!", and she huffed and puffed and said, "Well, I always clean it up!"  I responded, "Our kids play here, and you can't clean it all up you usually smear it all over!"  She huffed and puffed some more and stormed off.  She is one of many, who actually walks off the sidewalk onto our lawn to let their dog do its business.

2) There's another guy who while walking along, if he's picked up his dog's shit somewhere else, he'll walk up our driveway and throw it away in our trash can.  I've caught him on camera a few times, never in person, and I don't recognize him, but we have many people in our neighborhood of 100's of houses so could be from anywhere.  We have private trash service, so I'm pretty sure that is a crime.  Our cans are 30+ feet away from the sidewalk in our front yard, so there's no denying that he walks on our property and uses our trash cans.

3) We put up a 'No pooping zone' sign on the front of our yard.  I think a dog pissed on it within a day.

4) We have a partial fence toward the edge of our sideway which dogs frequently urinate on.  Some owners I've seen on our camera are really good, and pull the dog along if it stops to take a leak.  Many others do not.

Does anyone else deal with this and have any effective strategies.  Our family loves animals, but I'm tired of shit stains on our lawn and bags of poop in our trash cans.  I'm growing tired of confronting people in our yard and I feel I shouldn't have to do that on a daily/weekly basis.  Many people are apologetic, and will just walk past, but others seem to think that their dogs have free reign and that I'm a dick for saying anything.

We live on a city (Seattle proper) corner lot, so we've dealt with this a bit. As a general rule, the more you make a stink about it, the worse it will get.

We don't technically own the berm, the city does. However, we are still required to take care of it. My rule of thumb is that any shitting on the berm I'm okay with and clean up on my own when the owner doesn't, but inside the sidewalk line I sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and cayenne pepper once a month. That generally discourages dogs from even venturing there. I have heard a mint oil spray might help, too.

Another thing to try is to just stop picking it up. Put up a sign that says "This yard is covered in feces by rude dog owners and we have stopped cleaning it up. Enter at your own health risk." Put a big biohazard sign on it. I'll bet people stop letting their dogs poop there fairly quickly.

Regarding #2 - that's the thing I could only fix by bringing our city trash cans back into our fence on trash day. For awhile I was getting livid about people dropping dogshit bags into our trash right after the trucks come. So when I get home from work on trash day and there's dog shit bags in the bottom of my can, I dump them right back on the sidewalk. And they will fucking sit there until someone, anyone picks them. Or not. I walk around my yard once a week and pick up the drive by trash from the weed shops and mcdonalds - but I won't touch those shitbags to save a child's life.

I've had a lot of bourbon tonight and I think I've removed all the comments about flamethrowers and yard spikes, but there might be a few left in there...

Find where the owners live, and leave poop in their yards.

I've made the distinction for a long time now between Dog Owners and people that own dogs. Dog Owners are assholes. My dog is so fucking special and cute, I must take him in the store with me and what kind of monster are you if you complain. My dog is just the bestest and if he shits in your yard, that's really your problem because look at how awesome my dog is. Or my favorite for my road, my huskies are so fucking awesome, I walk all four of them down the road and make you stop your car until we get around you. (Seriously. Bitch won't move to the fucking side. She just walks straight at you and then directs her dogs slightly to the side around the truck. Takes every ounce of self control not to make ground beef. I fucking hate her.)

People that own dogs are the nicest, most considerate folk you'll know. They clean up after their dogs, and they think of other folks space and don't let their dogs monopolize it.

Leave rat poison soaked dog biscuits scattered around your yard at all times.  Tada.

Pretty sure they'll put you in jail for that.

I dislike dogs for many reasons, mostly because they are shitting barking machines that are a public nuisance to anybody that doesn't own one.

1 - Most cities have picking up dog shit ordinances or there is a fine. You can contact you city about enforcement of this law. You can also document the owners doing it and make sure to remind them they are breaking the law if you see them.
2 - Most states have illegal dumping laws. It's illegal for somebody to dump their trash on private property without consent. If you can catch them you can turn them in for this, in Georgia it's about a $1000 fine.
3 - The signs won't help. You're pissing into the wind on that one and in fact it makes your lawn a target because asshole dog owners think that dog-haters are monsters. They will intentionally fuck your lawn up.
4 - You'd be better off low-fencing the lawn if it's completely driving you nuts. Most dogs aren't going to hop a fence to poop on it.

Experiment with animal repellent. 

If your kids play on the lawn you probably don't want to use pepper-based solutions, but there are ultrasonic animal repellers that might do the trick.  I have one in my front yard to try to keep the local feral cats from shitting in it and it seems to be pretty effective.  The main downside is that if you have good hearing it'll annoy you too (your kids will definitely hear it), so get some that are easy to turn off when you want to enjoy your own yard.  Mine is on a schedule to only go off at night when the cats and raccoons are active.

There was a case around here a few years ago of someone leaving meatballs with rat poison in public places, which is definitely illegal.  I'm not sure what the laws would be on having poison in your own yard, though.  Signs warning "PEST CONTROL IN PROGRESS, KEEP DOGS ON LEASH TO AVOID ACCIDENTAL RAT POISON CONSUMPTION" might be more effective than "no pooping" signs even if you don't actually put the poison out.   :why_so_serious:

Moving to Seattle made me dislike dogs  :awesome_for_real:  

Mr.Hawkbit is probably being polite for the amount of feces and general inconvenience they cause him.  My *favorite* dog experiences are when they're taken into grocery stores.  I love seeing animals in the same places where I buy food.  And I don't eat out that much, but I'm sure they're also taken into restaurants in Seattle.

I'm not sure I mind dogs pooping on my lawn if it gets cleaned up and it's pretty near the curb, but that's in suburbia, with a pretty low concentration rate of dogs. I wouldn't like it on a smaller urban lawn with a ton of dogs, or if the dogs were allowed to go deep into my lawn where we routinely walked and played.

The thing is, if you walk dogs, they honestly take it into their own heads at times where they're going to poop. It's not all that predictable, and you can't stop them easily. You can go into parks or woods if those are nearby, but sometimes they just aren't.

The "I'm throwing this in your garbage" is a different thing in my book. That's just inexcusable--you can take your own dog's poop back to your own house and garbage. That's not hard, it's totally in your control.

If you really don't want any interaction between the world and your property, fence or wall it. Problem solved.

Just crucify a stuffed dog on your front lawn to serve as the appropriate warning.

If that fails, try crucifying a dog owner on your front lawn. Might get the message across.

It's hit or miss. I can't stand them in the grocery stores - they're mostly behaved very well but I don't want your dog's hair on my produce. We go out a lot and sometimes they're in restaurants but it is infrequent in West Seattle.

Some pubs allow them if well behaved and that can be fun. Beveridge Place Pub is a block from me and allows dogs; that almost always is pretty cool because it's fun to get a buzz and pet someone else's pups. Beveridge doesn't serve food but you can bring food in if you want - so that's a happy medium to dealing with dogs and food.

Samwise's signage idea is the best idea here - Put up "this lawn being treated for X - please keep dogs off to prevent poisoning" I really think is your best option.

Leave a bunch of chocolate or something in your yard. You can say the kids left it out there.  :why_so_serious:

This. As a dog owner, sometimes dogs just go where they want no matter what you do. The only thing you can do at that point is clean it the fuck up as quickly and politely as you can and get the dog the fuck out of there. If the owner tells you to not have your dog poop in their yard even if you clean it up, then you should at least attempt to do that in future. If you've warned this lady and she persists, call the cops. Just because she cleans it up doesn't give her the right to continually come back to your yard after you've asked her not to.

#2 (see what I did there) is a goddamn fucking sociopath and clearly needs a right good night sticking. If your garbage cans were on the street for pickup and he drops the shitbag in, at least it was on the street. Still nasty but understandable. Motherfucker comes on your property to deposit his dog's load? That's some bullshit right there and you should get a pissed off doberman to guard those cans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQEIO3Kxvak

Animals in grocery stores? WTF?

I have recently become a dog owner, and all of the complained behaviors in this thread have nothing to do with dogs being shitty, all all to do with their owners being assholes.

Yup. Dog Owners vs People that own dogs.

Print out the pictures of the uncooperative suspects during the act and tape them to your fence and garbage can.  Make sure to make extras for when they rip them down so you can put them back up.

In 1.5 months snow will have melted quite a bit and there will be dog poo visible all over the place. There is a walk near the lake where poo quickly disappears since its snow all over but when snow starts to melt you will find there's dog poo within every 1*1m, looked like a pigsty.

I assume its mostly just joking, but lets please lay off of the "leave things that are poisonous to dogs around your yard" comments. 30 years later, I still get bothered by the memories of dealing with putting down my loving family pet of 10 years, because we couldn't watch her suffer through the liver failure brought on by poisoning.

The snow poo thing is a real issue. Drives me nuts, particularly because hard-frozen dog poo is the easiest kind of dog poo to pick up and sodden muddy poo that was hidden by the snow until the melt is the worst kind of dog poo for everyone to deal with.

These are common problems - that many people do not even bother considering to be problems.

1.) All sorts of animals, from cats to squirrels to birds to rats... shit in your yard.  If you want to pretend it is sanitized, be my guest, but realistically, it is a disgusting place - with or without dogs.

2.) Don't be so sure.  Trash cans in a public place are fair game in many ways - the media goes through the trash of celebrities all the time - because it is legal for them to do so.  With the private trash service you may have an issue you can complain about, but really... is it that bad that they're throwing something in your can? People throw stuff in my can all the time - including poop - and I have never had a single worry about it.

3.) Dogs do that... and I bet there is bird, insect and other animal leavings on it, too. 

4.) Anything near the front of the property is going to get decorated if people walk their dog by your yard.  If you want to protect it, create a gap that makes it awkward for the dog to step near it.  That is what I did for my flower beds. 

You're not going to win this war.  It is one of those things that you're better off learning to accept and moving on rather than fighting.  You'll lose more by fighting than you'll gain.

1. Fuck you, that's quite different than a giant steamer left behind by my neighbor's dog.

2. I really give a toss.

3. Still an asshole owner that lets his dog do that.

4. Doesn't make dog owners any less assholes.

The best thing to do would be to spend the cash on one of those paintball sentry guns and see whose dog is a different color the next day. Whee.

This is relevant: https://imgur.com/gallery/YYIyP

Read, please.  In the initial post they talked about the dog owner cleaning it up.  No steamers left, just remains after cleaning up. 

You can be the neighborhood jerk that sits on the lawn with a paintball gun, or you can accept that this shit happens, take a few passive precautions, and accept that shit happens.

I'll take jerk. Every time.

Also, I guarantee that gal isn't cleaning it up every time, either. People only bluster like that if they've been caught.

Fuck it, just go full Nerf.  :why_so_serious:

Most dog owners clean it up 99% of the time - only failing to do so when the dog takes an extra large number of craps and you run out of baggies, or you just forget the baggies and are too far from home to run back and get them.  However, most people I know that have dogs clean it up the rest of the time. 

Treating all dog owners like the rare jerks is a mistake.   

I'm not going to argue with you because I don't have any real data to counter, and it's unnecessary.  <derail>  I would just say IMO there are too many fucking dogs and cats in general. Not everyone needs a pet.  Let alone a mammal that often kills dwindling wildlife.  My personal beef is just that dogs (and cats) are too fucking popular and there's a ridiculous number where I live.  They are ubiquitous.  They are even in *all* my buildings at work.  So, yeah -- not all dog owners are shitheads, but not everyone also needs to have a dog.

I'm in favor of this one, too. Full camera perimeter and legal proceedings, please.

As a dog owner, who walks his dogs and cleans up after them, I can say this statistic is utter bullshit. Or dog shit. Most dog owners do not clean up after their dogs. My neighbors have actually complimented me on attempting to clean up after mine because so many others just do not bother. And this is in a city with leash laws.

So more dog owners just leave their shit casually rather than carrying around baggies and cleaning up after their dog?  I'm not saying that 99% of dog owners clean up all the time - I'm saying the majority almost always clean up.  If you think the majority of dog owners taking their dogs for walks just leave the crap everywhere - fucking move. 

I live near the end of a court.  At the end of a court is a path to a park with a dog 'off leash' area.  People walk their dogs on my street all the time.  Over 100 dogs a day are walked past my house.  If this were a real problem, I'd be up in arms. 

This is a fuck of a hill to die on.

Dude, have you seen his posting history?  :why_so_serious:

Honestly, I don't think it's worth flipping out if someone dutifully cleans up dog poo that's at the edge of your lawn or yard, but...

On the other hand, let's be serious about poo identification. I walk our guys in the woods, in the neighborhoods, I explore around on my own hikes, I watch animals, I study tracks, and I guarantee you: dog poo is dog poo. Even their closest relatives in most places--foxes and coyotes--have completely different looking feces. If you spot a poop and you think, "Some jerk is letting his dog crap in my yard", you're right.

I have mistaken what turned out to be cat poop for dog poop.  Kept walking out my front door every morning to a fresh turd next to my front walkway, and was convinced for the longest time that somebody had a routine of walking their dog past my house early in the morning and having them poop there because it's the only yard on the block with enough foliage to poop on.  I set up cameras to find the culprit, and it turns out it was feral cats coming by at 2am to do their business.  The aforementioned sonic repellent seems to have mostly put a stop to that, thankfully.

The poop I end up finding in my yard, usually when mowing the lawn, is almost always large enough that no animal other than a large dog or a human can leave that large of a pile.

This is dying on a hill to you?

I fenced off my backyard, mostly to keep dogs from shitting in it (flinging it at the front doors of the owners did make the problems less) I have cats, they stay inside and shit in boxes. They only get to kill mice/lizards/crickets/moths/spiders that venture inside, and are good at disposing of the evidence either by eating it, or hiding it in my wife's shoes.

I get a bit, but there's a park on one side and a school on the other (through some woods, even), so they usually drop elsewhere. But yeah, few clean it up. For a while we had someone bagging it...and then just leaving the bag on the lawns. The old lady pays guys to mow in the summer, so I usually don't see it anymore. For me, it's more dealing with the skunk and deer crap in the backyard near the woodpile. So much deer crap.

The sidewalk by the school is a joy during a thaw though. We just walk on the road because the sidewalk is a shitcarpet.

Impossible. Most owners clean it up.

#notalldogowners   :awesome_for_real:

1. I don't buy this argument.  We have intent at the root of everything: you wouldn't argue that hail falling from the sky and smashing your car windshield is exactly the same as some guy taking a hammer to it, since, Hey? They are both broken, right?

2. The total volume taken up by a few poop bags isn't the problem:  it's the mindset that it's ok that is really the problem.  Again, this argument falls apart: can I steal your oranges, and argue that some would have fallen on the ground on their own?  Because gravity?  Can I park my car in the unused spot on your driveway, because the driveway doesn't care?

For that matter, can I walk onto your doorstep, drop my pants, and leave a steamer on your front door because some wild animal might have done it anyways?

3. Same as above.  I can't control what wild animals do.  People aren't typically given any such leeway.

4. Again - I have to contemplate a few thousands of dollars for a fence work, because other people just can't be asked to respect property rights?

I just can't envision any scenario, dog or not, where I would ever willingly tread around on someones property, for any reason maybe other than I thought someone was in danger.  It wouldn't even cross my mind to do so.  It's surprising that there are others who think this is ok.  Yes, I may be just a crotchety old asshole but I don't thing I'm wrong either.

Right, you're worried about the crap intent, not the crap substance.  And, if a guy throws a hammer through my window in the middle of a hailstorm that has already broken all the windows... My neighbors *do* take a few of my lemons off the tree.  It produces more than enough to share.  The extent to which an 'imposing' activity impacts your life should be considered.  People dropping a bit of crap in your trash can isn't going to impact you unless they have elephants.No.  Let's try an exercise in reading - answer me why I think that is different based upon what I've already posted.Most people have wild animals in their community that are likely to damage exposed property.  And, like I suggested above, a little precaution on your side can prevent it. 

I'm not endorsing dragging a dog to your house and waiting until it pees on your stuff (yet), but acting like dog piss/shit is unusual, or that your yard is totally clean of any other befoulment, is ridiculous.   I can't say you're an asshole (yet), but yeah - you're the crotchety guy in the neighborhood.  My neighbors take my lemons.  They drop stuff in my trash can if their can is full.  Their kids sit under my tree (amongst the crap remnants) to read books and play games.  Those kids also ride up my driveway when turning their bikes around.  Their dogs piss on my lawn.  Their dogs poop on my lawn, too (although in my experience that gets picked up almost all the time). 

I'm in a fucking neighborhood.  My neighbors are my friends.  We're not scared of each other or anti-social.  I know everybody in every one of the 20 nearest houses to me - and most of the people that live within 200 yards of me in any direction.  I put up with their shit, and they'd put up with mine if I wasn't such a fucking angel that never pisses anyone off.   

Simply put: Chill the fuck out.  You'll be happier.

Just now, before my eyes, I witnessed someone SirBruce a post in order to white-knight literal dog shit.

Psycho.   :why_so_serious:

Today was a good day.

Well, thank you for sharing your point of view, it has been...illustrative, and explains a lot about the attitude of people I am dealing with.

And in defense of crotchety old assholes: my neighbors have asked things of me and my family and we've always been willing to help.  Across the street, our neighbor was doing a renovation and asked us if they could throw away stuff in our can, and we said yes.  We've dog sat multiple times with little notice, as our next door neighbor was dealing with a sick parent and often needed to leave town on short notice.

However in all of those cases the neighbor asked first, before assuming and just taking.  And they weren't complete strangers either like I am seeing on my camera.